Are Gun Accidents 'Very Rare'?

[SecularMotion]

Yesterday, at CNN.com, I offered two proposals to enhance gun safety that would not require a vote of Congress: (1) a Surgeon General's report on the health hazards of guns in the home; (2) a congressional investigation of the safety practices of the gun industry.

Robert VerBruggen offered a substantial reply at National Review Online.

Before responding in my turn, there's a threshold point that must be stressed and then stressed again. At one point in his reply, Robert dismissively describes one study of gun safety as a "tiny phone survey" "conducted in 1996." And of course … he's right! A lot of the most important data in the gun debate is unsatisfactory and is out-of-date.

There's a reason for that, and the reason is that the gun advocates themselves passed a law through Congress almost 20 years ago forbidding the use of federal research dollars to study gun safety. It's audacious for the people who have done everything in their power to suppress the evidence now to complain about the poor quality of the evidence as exists. Their determination to suppress the evidence is itself the strongest clue as to which way the evidence points.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/20/why-does-the-gun-lobby-fear-science-and-safety.html

[Glassunion]

1. I did drop an ammo can on my foot the other day.

Does that count?

[av8r1998]

4. LOL!

Dropped a case of .45 on my foot this AM!
Tally 1 more gun accident!

[oneshooter]

7. We had an firearms "accident"

during a class last week.

One of my students had a case of "M1 thumb" during a class.

[Glassunion]

11. Ouch.

That's like slamming your finger in the car door.

[oneshooter]

12. yea it is, She told me later that the fun she

had during the class almost made up for it. She also told me that she will pay a lot more attention to the classroom part of the training.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

13. I'm told M1 thumb...

...comes in two varieties:
simple - the end of the thumb is pinched or slammed by the slide due to up to 1 cm of thumb over hanging the end of the slide.
compound - the end of the thumb is slammed and held by the slide while a portion of thumb is chambered by/along with the round.

Any experiences with the compound situation?

[oneshooter]

14. Once, a few years ago.

Shooter caught his thumb, from the first joint forward in the action while the rifle clearing the rifle to insert a flag. One of the shooters was a EMT and I keep a level 3 Trauma bag on the range. Got him fixed up enough to drive him to Hospital (45 miles each way). He came back the next session and wanted to practice off hand shooting and one hand reloads I wonder why?

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. depends on who is doing the math and how and where they pull their numbers.

[bossy22]

3. he needs to stop assuming things

Mr. Frum assums that there is some inherent defectiveness in firearms that caues these accidents- that we could really cut down on accidents if we had consumer safety regulators. The problem is that just isn't true- i'd say that 99.999% of all firearm accidental injuries are due to user error.

It's not hard to prevent injuries, if you follow essen these 4 rules
1.All guns are always loaded.
2.Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy.
3.Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target.
4.Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.

you are almost garunteed too avoid an injury. Just look at all gun accident reports- you will see that somewhere, someone didn't follow the "rules"- usually its assuming that gun is not loaded.

How many people a year are injured doing routine ouside housework? I'm guessing alot more than just 15,000. Just think if we could limit outside work to licensed and insured contractors only, how many lives we could save....

[av8r1998]

5. You forgot one...

Keep a gun unloaded until ready to use.
My carry gun is always loaded.
So is my HD gun.
ANY other gun in my posession is locked up and unloaded.
And ya know what? Every time I take one out of the safe, or dry fire it, I open the action. Just to be sure.

Yeah ... accidents happen, but I'd bet my life on the .0001% that happen when all of the above are followed.
You have better odds of winning Powerball.

[ileus]

6. Yes

[Just Pragmatic]

8. Need to track

Murders and accidents are insignificant terms. What we need is the number of "defensive" killings, those that the shooter subsequently is proud of, verses the number of "oops" killings, those that the shooter regrets.

These terms bare directly on the wisdom of having a gun

[gejohnston]

9. depends on why you have the gun

In my case, it isn't relevant. One of the cool things about living in the woods.

[ManiacJoe]

10. Proud?

Probably not the word you are really looking for.